I’m disappointed in my fellow milspouses.

As I lay in bed this morning, trying to motivate myself to get up and do *something* I did what every great American does- check Facebook. I scroll down and I come across a post in some random milspouse Facebook page that I joined to advertise my preschool, and I see this post:

 

I wish I could have screenshot the whole post but at 187 comments a mere 5 hours after I originally saw it, it was just too much. I know its small, but this is basically the jist of it:

• Original poster (OP) posts this pic of a girl dressed very…originally and says, “I found this on a dependa bashing page blah blah blah the rest isnt’ important.”
• People follow in with their comments saying things such as, “Maybe she’s homeless and that stroller is her belongings because there can’t be a child in that stroller since she’s not paying attention to it,” and “That outfit is *enter awful/mean adjective here*” and basically “How can she even think to go out of the house like that and represent her husband in that way.”

And those were just the first 10 or 15 comments. They continued this way until someone (achem, me) finally came to this girl’s defense. More and more people followed that, and for a few hours some of the women went back and forth calling each other bitches and basically bringing out the claws on one another.

I was appalled by some of things these fellow milspouses were saying about this girl (and to each other). Maybe her outfit isn’t what most people would wear. So what? What does that have to do with you? Absolutely f-ing nothing.

Some of the meanmils (mean milspouses) were trying to tell us nice ones that we shouldn’t say anything because “its not like [we’ve] never judged anyone by what they were wearing.” Ok, fair enough. But most of us are normal people and do it behind closed doors and whisper about it to our girlfriends. We giggle it off and let it freaking be. We don’t take pictures and blast it all over SEVERAL Facebook pages for others to point and laugh. That’s bullying. 20-something women who have gone through some really hard shit are BULLYING each other. It’s flipping ridiculous.

When one of the nicemils (nice milspouses) called the meanmils out to be bullies, they flipped out. They said they were bullies because they weren’t being forceful and intimidating this poor girl. That if she decided to walk out of the house like that, she should be ready for the backlash. That if she was so offended by what people were saying, she should come out and say something or dress differently.

WT actual F. Really? Ever heard of cyber-bullying? Its what caused this LITTLE GIRL to commit suicide, and countless others. And yea, like any sane person is going to walk into a stream of flowing word bullets about themselves, especially on Facebook.

Honestly, I just don’t get it. What do these women gain from acting like pieces of crap to one another? One responder said they were just trying to make themselves feel better by belittling this girl. Maybe that’s true. But yesterday I sat there racking my brain about why someone would sit there and bash another person over and over again. Don’t they realize how they are making that person feel? Have they never heard any stories about people hurting themselves, or others, after being constantly berated? Go ahead and Google cyberbullying and suicide rates. Or Facebook bully deaths.

J brought up a couple good points about this photo. One being that if this was a group of teenagers posting this stuff about a fellow classmate, it would be on Fox News faster than an exclusive interview with George Bush. More importantly, however, people made so many assumptions about this girl without really thinking about the effect of what they were saying. Take out the fact that she’s dressed differently. Maybe she’s texting her husband to let them know where they are located so he can meet them. Maybe her child is asleep in the stroller and she does what every American does when they are bored- grab their phone. Maybe she’s going through postpartum depression and she is doing the best she can, but all these comments about her on Facebook have really set her back. Maybe her husband is deployed and she’s emailing him about something funny her kids did that day.

The point is that you don’t know what another person is dealing with. And Christ, even if you do, why would you attack their clothing choice? She’s not naked, and she doesn’t look “inappropriate.” Basically, all I want to say to all those meanmils is mind your own f-ing business, and do something better with your lives than be a cyber-bully. You aren’t in high school anymore. You are a married woman. You might have kids. You might have a job outside the home. YOU ARE A REPRESENTATION OF YOUR HUSBAND AND HIS MILITARY BRANCH OF SERVICE. Act like a lady, not a douchebag.